Anonymous donors pay off Kmart layaway accounts

View full sizeAssociated Press Kmart store manager Ted Straub of Omaha, Neb. says dozens of Kmart customers across the country have had their layaways paid off by strangers.

OMAHA, Neb. -- The
young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty
clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.

He
asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn't be able
to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to
the counter.

"She told him, 'No, I'm paying for it,'" recalled
Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. "He just
stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a
joke. I told him it wasn't, and that she was going to pay for him. And
he just busted out in tears."

At Kmart stores across the country,
Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off
strangers' layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families
couldn't afford, especially toys and children's clothes set aside by
impoverished parents.

Before she left the store Tuesday evening,
the Indianapolis woman in her mid-40s had paid the layaway orders for as
many as 50 people. On the way out, she handed out $50 bills and paid
for two carts of toys for a woman in line at the cash register.

"She
was doing it in the memory of her husband who had just died, and she
said she wasn't going to be able to spend it and wanted to make people
happy with it," Deppe said. The woman did not identify herself and only
asked people to "remember Ben," an apparent reference to her husband.

Deppe, who said she's worked in retail for 40 years, had never seen anything like it.

"It was like an angel fell out of the sky and appeared in our store," she said.

Most of the donors have done their giving secretly.

Dona
Bremser, an Omaha nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to
tell her that someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway
account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son.

Dozens of other customers have received similar calls in Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Montana.

The
benefactors generally ask to help families who are squirreling away
items for young children. They often pay a portion of the balance,
usually all but a few dollars or cents so the layaway order stays in the
store's system.

The phenomenon seems to have begun in Michigan before spreading, Kmart executives said.

"It
is honestly being driven by people wanting to do a good deed at this
time of the year," said Salima Yala, Kmart's division vice president for
layaway.

The good Samaritans seem to be visiting mainly Kmart
stores, though a Wal-Mart spokesman said a few of his stores in Joplin,
Mo., and Chicago have also seen some layaway accounts paid off.

Kmart
representatives say they did nothing to instigate the secret Santas or
spread word of the generosity. But it's happening as the company
struggles to compete with chains such as Wal-Mart and Target.

Kmart
may be the focus of layaway generosity, Yala said, because it is one of
the few large discount stores that has offered layaway year-round for
about four decades.

The sad memories of layaways lost prompted at
least one good Samaritan to pay off the accounts of five people at an
Omaha Kmart, said Karl Graff, the store's assistant manager.

"She
told me that when she was younger, her mom used to set up things on
layaway at Kmart, but they rarely were able to pay them off because they
just didn't have the money for it," Graff said.

He called a woman
who had been helped, "and she broke down in tears on the phone with me.
She wasn't sure she was going to be able to pay off their layaway and
was afraid their kids weren't going to have anything for Christmas."

"You
know, 50 bucks may not sound like a lot, but I tell you what, at the
right time, it may as well be a million dollars for some people," Graff
said.

Graff's store alone has seen about a dozen layaway accounts
paid off in the last 10 days, with the donors paying $50 to $250 on each
account.

"To be honest, in retail, it's easy to get cynical about
the holidays, because you're kind of grinding it out when everybody
else is having family time," Graff said. "It's really encouraging to see
this side of Christmas again."

Lori Stearnes of Omaha also
benefited from the generosity of a stranger who paid all but $58 of her
$250 layaway bill for toys for her four youngest grandchildren.

Stearnes
said she and her husband live paycheck to paycheck, but she plans to
use the money she was saving for the toys to help pay for someone else's
layaway.

In Missoula, Mont., a man spent more than $1,200 to pay
down the balances of six customers whose layaway orders were about to be
returned to a Kmart store's inventory because of late payments.

Store
employees reached one beneficiary on her cellphone at Seattle
Children's Hospital, where her son was being treated for an undisclosed
illness.

"She was yelling at the nurses, 'We're going to have Christmas after all!'" store manager Josine Murrin said.

A
Kmart in Plainfield Township, Mich., called Roberta Carter last week to
let her know a man had paid all but 40 cents of her $60 layaway.

Carter,
a mother of eight from Grand Rapids, Mich., said she cried upon hearing
the news. She and her family have been struggling as she seeks a
full-time job.

"My kids will have clothes for Christmas," she said.

Angie
Torres, a stay-at-home mother of four children under the age of 8, was
in the Indianapolis Kmart on Tuesday to make a payment on her layaway
bill when she learned the woman next to her was paying off her account.

"I
started to cry. I couldn't believe it," said Torres, who doubted she
would have been able to pay off the balance. "I was in disbelief. I
hugged her and gave her a kiss."

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